The casting of lots has a long history in human culture—it’s mentioned in the Bible, and it was used by ancient Romans to distribute property. More recently, the lottery has become a widespread method of raising public funds and distributing large amounts of prize money. In fact, the first lotteries with tickets for sale and prizes in the form of cash are believed to have been held in the Low Countries around the 1500s; records from Ghent, Utrecht, and Bruges mention raising money to repair town walls and for the poor. King Francis I of France introduced a national lottery in the 1600s.
State-run lotteries grew popular in the United States after World War II, and many private firms also have run them. The major reason states and the federal government endorse them is that they raise money for their respective governments without requiring any direct taxation. Unlike other sources of revenue, such as corporate taxes or sales taxes, lotteries are “voluntary”—players spend their own money in the hope that they will win a large prize.
Moreover, the majority of players come from middle-income neighborhoods. However, because they often spend more than their incomes can afford to lose, many of them end up sacrificing the very incomes that they would have saved for retirement or college tuition by purchasing lottery tickets instead. And because the odds of winning are so long, they also tend to develop all sorts of quote-unquote systems—involving lucky numbers and stores and times of day—that are not based on any statistical reasoning at all.
